Time Running Out on Energy Credits

  • Pete Sickman-Garner and his daughter Robin with their new high efficiency freezer. After getting rid of a 25-year old energy hogging fridge, insulating their house, and putting in new storm windows, their gas and electric bills are much lower. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

One thing is clear… energy prices are just going to keep going up. If you’ve been thinking about making your house more energy efficient, now’s the time. That’s because a federal tax credit will be running out in a few months. Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

One thing is clear… energy prices are just going to keep going up. If you’ve been thinking about making your house more energy efficient, now’s the time. That’s because a federal tax credit will be running out in a few months. Rebecca Williams has more:

Pete Sickman-Garner didn’t have any trouble finding the leaks in his house. It was built in the 1940’s… with pretty much zero insulation.

“It was cold! There were nights my daughter woke up because she was had rolled over and touched the wall and it was so cold it woke her up.”

And there were those huge gas and electric bills in the dead of winter. He says he and his wife knew they really needed to seal up the house. So they hired a guy to blow insulation into the walls. And they put up new storm windows.

“It was roughly a $4000 home improvement so not insignificant. But so far we’ve gotten back $900 on our gas bill… it should pay for itself easily within 5 years.”

And on top of that they got a tax credit.

There was a pretty huge tax incentive last year for making your home more energy efficient… and it’s happening again this year. But it’s winding down. You only have eight months left.

Here’s how it works: the government will essentially pay you to make your home more efficient. Little purchases like weather stripping count. Bigger things like insulation and storm windows do too. And so do the really big things like a new furnace or central air conditioner. You can get a tax credit for 30 percent of the cost of these things… up to 15-hundred dollars total for all of your purchases. That’s money sliced right off your tax bill.

But like most things with the word “tax” in them… these home energy tax credits can get complicated.

Insulation and air conditioners and windows have to meet certain codes. You can’t go by the Energy Star label alone. On top of that… you can include the cost of installing heating and cooling equipment in your tax credit. But you can’t include those installation costs for anything else. So here’s where it’s good to call in a tax credit pro to help you wade through the details.

Ronnie Kweller is with the Alliance to Save Energy.

“When you go shopping, definitely ask the retailer: do these items qualify for the federal tax credits?”

Kweller says the best place to start is to make sure you have enough insulation for your climate. And then, seal up the little leaks in your house. You could pay three to five hundred dollars for an energy audit. Or… you can try this trick: close all the windows and doors… turn on your kitchen and bathroom exhaust fans. And then:

“Light, say, a stick of incense and just walk around the perimeter of your house on the inside, holding incense around the edges of windows and doors and if you see smoke blowing in towards you whether or not you can feel air coming in, you’ll know there is some air leak.”

She says sealing up those leaks can save you as much as 20 percent on your energy bills.

And a lot of the little – and big – things you do can count toward your 15-hundred dollar credit.

The thing is, most people tend to think about their taxes at the end of the year. Unfortunately for some businesses… that means they’re slammed when the weather’s the worst.

Donna Napolitano runs Mechanical Energy Systems. They sell all kinds of high efficiency heating and cooling equipment. She says people were squeaking in their big purchases right up until December last year.

“It was crazy here! We were installing every day and we had to combat against the weather, I mean hello, summer’s here it’s a great time to put systems in now!”

Unless this tax credit gets extended… you only have a few more months. Everything has to be paid for and installed by December 31st. So if you’re a procrastinator… you might want to start thinking about your projects sometime soon.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

“By the way… if you want to do extremely efficient installations like solar panels and geothermal heating and cooling systems, that 30-percent tax credit is not capped at 15-hundred dollars and does not run out this year.”

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World Governments Failing on Biodiversity

  • The recovery of the European Bison is one of the recent successes in the fight against biodiversity loss. Despite some improvements, the UNEP report suggests efforts to address the loss of biodiversity need to be substantially strengthened.(Photo courtesy of Gil Wojciech, Polish Forest Research Institute, Poland)

Transcript

A new report finds an agreement among the world’s governments to protect nature is failing. Lester Graham reports on the assessment which finds more animals, forests and other habitats are being lost.

World governments signed the 2002 Convention of Biological Diversity, agreeing to protect more habitat and species that are at risk. An assessment of the progress has been published in the journal Science and it finds biodiversity is at greater risk than it was when the agreement was signed eight years ago. Matt Foster is with the environmental group Conservation International. He says despite some government efforts to protect habitat, there have been more pressures destroying habitat and biodiversity.

“And it’s a scary prospect, not just from a biodiversity side, but considering that there are so many vulnerable people around the world for whom the services provided by nature and biodiversity are essential such as for water, for food and all of us depend on nature and forests especially to try to mitigate climate change.”

Foster says much more needs to be done by governments and the private sector to preserve natural areas and protect species.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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The Great Blue Heron

  • An island in the Upper Mississippi, not far from downtown Minneapolis, is home to many Great Blue Herons.(Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

Some people say robins are the first sign of spring. But there’s another bird that makes a dramatic entry in northern states. The Great Blue Heron soars in to make a nest… and guard it:

Transcript

Some people say robins are the first sign of spring. But there’s another bird that makes a dramatic entry in northern states. The Great Blue Heron soars in to make a nest… and guard it:

On an island in the Upper Mississippi River, a stand of cottonwood trees is silhouetted against a gray sky. The bare branches are festooned with big nests, made of twigs and branches. Next to the nests, like sentinels at the castle gate, stand Great Blue Herons. These birds are four feet tall. More than a hundred of them are claiming their domain in these trees, just upriver from downtown Minneapolis. When one takes off and glides away, its six-foot wing span dwarfs the ducks and songbirds sharing the island.

It’s hard to tell the males from the females because they’re the same blue and gray. Birder Sharon Stiteler is leading me on a tour of this rookery.

“The males arrive first, and they work out who’s going to take which nest. Where you see one bird standing up, that is most likely a male. He’s hanging out there because the other males who are still waiting to attract a female could come by and steal sticks out of his nest to make his nest look better.”

On some nests, you can see females already sitting on pale blue eggs the size of small mangoes. But Stiteler says herons are not always good parents.

“If the chick falls out of the nest and lands on the ground, that chick is toast: the parents will not continue feeding it. And oftentimes you’ll see turkey vultures hanging out at rookeries, and they’re waiting for the young to fall and starve, and then they’ll have a whole bunch of food.”

But at least on this island, there won’t be many predators like coyotes or foxes.

These birds were once threatened by humans. Their cousins the egrets were hunted for their beautiful white feathers, and both suffered disastrous population loss until the pesticide DDT was banned.

Now you can see them in streams and lakes all over. They breed in Canada and the upper midwest. They spend their winters wherever they can find food. Herons literally stalk their prey.

“They have a lot of patience, and they just stare at one spot for long time, and then they jab down and grab the fish. Their beak is shaped like a pair of super-sharp chopsticks. Sometimes they catch a huge fish and they have to juggle it around, especially if they have it perpendicular with their beak, they have to jostle it around, and the fish is wiggling, and eventually they get it just right so it’s straight in line with the bill, and you can watch this huge thing slide down that long slender neck.”

Sharon Stiteler is a part-time naturalist with the National Park Service, and she writes a blog called bird-chick-dot-com.

Today the herons are pretty quiet. But Stiteler has a Blackberry loaded with their sounds, including the prehistoric squawk they make when they’re startled.

And Stiteler says it can sound really strange when the young are clattering for food.

After the young are raised — at least the ones that survive — the herons will stay here on the river, until it freezes over and they can’t fish anymore. Stiteler says the birds decamp all at once.

“One day we have Great Blue Herons, and the next day they’re gone, and they migrate at night.”

They tuck back their long necks when they fly, forming an S-shape and hiding their true length.

Stiteler says the recovery of Great Blue Herons, along with pelicans, eagles, and other birds near the top of the food chain is a sign of a healthier ecosystem.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Report Finds Cleaner Air Out There

  • According to a recent report, a decade of cleanup measures to reductions in emissions have paid off in cutting levels of deadly particle and ozone pollution. (Photo courtesy of the NREL)

A new report finds some of the cities with the worst air pollution are breathing a little easier. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A new report finds some of the cities with the worst air pollution are breathing a little easier. Lester Graham reports.

The American Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” report uses the latest data from 2006, 2007 and 2008. That’s just before the economy really tanked. Janice Nolan is with the American Lung Association. She says even though factories were still running at full tilt, improvement in air quality was seen across the nation. Particularly in cities the group watches closely.

“We’ve tracked some of the 25 most polluted cities each year to see how they’re faring and in each case we saw significant improvement in most of the cities in those twenty-five.”

Nolan says cleaner diesel fuel and new less polluting trucks… along with some improvements at coal-burning power plants helped. But she says other dirtier coal-burning plants and older diesel trucks continue to pollute the air.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Greenovation: Spray Foam Your Home

  • While there are tax credits for spray insulation, credit is available for the material only, so the contractor should separate out the material and the labor costs.(Photo courtesy of the NREL)

When people talk about making their home energy independent, they often talk about solar panels and wind turbines. But before all of that, a home has to be tight. That’s not as exciting, but necessary. Lester Graham is following Greenovation.tv’s Matt Grocoff as he tries to make his home the oldest net-zero-energy house in America.

Transcript

When people talk about making their home energy independent, they often talk about solar panels and wind turbines. But before all of that, a home has to be tight. That’s not as exciting, but necessary. Lester Graham is following Greenovation.tv’s Matt Grocoff as he tries to make his home the oldest net-zero-energy house in America:

The note on Matt’s door told me to come on in and head for the basement. Matt’s 110 year old home has what’s called around here a “Michigan basement.” Basically, cement floor, stone walls, low ceilings. Not glamorous.

Matt is spraying expanding foam insulation up in that area where the floor framing sits on the foundation. The sill plate… which is basically nothing more than one-and-a-half inches of wood between inside your home… and the great outdoors.

“There’s no insulation between your house, or your living part, and the foundation itself.”

Maybe you’ve been in the basement of an old house and sometimes you can actually see daylight through the sill plate in places. Those leaks need to be sealed. That could be done with caulk. Then the area needs to be insulated. That could be done with fiberglass insulation.

“What we decided to do is to do both at the same time, seal and insulate, is to use a do-it-yourself spray foam insulation kit from Tiger Foam. There’s plenty of professionals out there, and for most people, that’s what I’d recommend you do, go to the professional. If money is an issue or if you’re a really handy person, these spray foam kits are fantastic.”

The foam insulation kit costs about 300-dollars. It’s basically two tanks -each about the size of a propane tank you’d use for an outdoor grill. A hose from each tank is attached to a spray gun that mixes the chemicals. The chemicals mix as they come out and the make a sticky foam that expands into nooks and crannies and then hardens after several minutes.

“Way easier than I thought they were going to be, by the way. I was actually terrified. I went back and read the instructions three – four times. And when I started spraying, it wasn’t that bad.”

“You still ended up with a goof, though.”

“I did have a goof. There was a little bit of foam there, dripping, when I forgot to turn on one of the canisters, but what ya– c’mon Lester.”

Matt’s goof means he’s going to have to wipe up some of the mess and spray again. But it’s not a disaster.

If you’ve got a big job… maybe new construction or a remodel that takes it down to the studs… you might want to consider a professional.

John Cunningham owns Arbor Insulation in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He says, sure, if you’re up to it… do it yourself.

“You could assume that it’d be cheaper to do it yourself and the kits are a really good option, especially for people that have smaller projects or they’re looking to do the work in a very specific time frame or in a distant location for instance.”

But the professionals are recommended for those big jobs. And right now there are federal tax credits for spray foam insulation– 30-percent up to 15-hundred dollars. That credit is limited though.

“The tax credit is available for the material only, so the contractor should be separating out the material and the labor. Also, there are additional incentives from some utilities and more incentives coming down the pike.”

Some states and even municipalities are considering incentives.

One final note… to use the spray foam, Matt Grocoff is decked out in a white haz-mat suit, latex gloves, goggles and a respirator…

“You’ve got to take all the safety precautions. You’ve got to wear your goggles, your suit. And it also can be messy too. Any overspray that gets in your hair will stay in your hair.”

And as he zips up, I get the hint that Matt has to get back to work.

“I do. I’ve got 30 seconds before this nozzle sets up. So, Lester, thanks again.”

“Sounds like my cue to get out of here. That’s Matt Grocoff with Greenovation-dot-TV. I’m Lester Graham with The Environment Report.”

“Thanks Lester.”

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Budget Trimmers Target Ethanol

  • CEO of Growth Energy, Tom Buis argues ... we spend plenty of money for overseas oil ... why not support home-grown ethanol?(Photo courtesy of the NREL)

President Obama’s visit to the Corn Belt is highlighting a tough debate about the future of corn-based ethanol used in our cars.

Transcript

President Obama’s visit to the Corn Belt is highlighting a tough debate about the future of corn-based ethanol used in our cars.

Congress is looking to cut the federal budget and one target is a key ethanol subsidy.

It’s a tax credit of about 4 and a half billion dollars, and it runs out by the end of the year.

Ethanol trade groups are fighting to extend that credit.

Tom Buis is CEO of Growth Energy.

He argues … we spend plenty of money for overseas oil … why not support home-grown ethanol?

“We create jobs, jobs that can’t be outsourced. I don’t know why we want to fund economies of foreign governments. We should be looking at spurring our own economic development here in the United States.”

Last year the Government Accountability Office questioned whether we need this particular ethanol tax credit, since the government requires gasoline refiners to blend-in billions of gallons of ethanol anyway.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Is Radical Homemaking the New Feminism?

  • Author Shannon Hayes says raising chickens and growing veggies is a new route for women who consider themselves feminists. (Photo courtesy of Nathan & Jenny CC-2.0)

Women who consider themselves feminists might be shocked to hear what some are calling the new wave of feminism: women heading back to the kitchen – and the garden. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Women who consider themselves feminists might be shocked to hear what some are calling the new wave of feminism: women heading back to the kitchen – and the garden. Julie Grant reports:

When Shannon Hayes was finishing her PhD, she made a list of all the female professors she’d ever had. There wasn’t one who had tenure who was also married with children. Hayes wanted a husband and family, and realized that if she wanted a big university job…

“I was not going to have these things. And they were as important to me as having a career. In fact, in truth they were more important to me.”

So, much to the dismay of her PhD committee members, she headed back to the northern foothills of the Appalachian mountains near the family farm where she grew up. She bought a teeny house with her husband. People whispered. What had gone wrong?

Once there, Hayes couldn’t even get a job interview. To make things worse, her husband lost his job two weeks after buying the house. So, they fell back on their domestic skills.

“Well, if something broke, we fixed it. If something ripped, we mended it. I was very good at canning, so any food we didn’t grow on the farm or didn’t grow in our gardens I wold go to the local farmers when it was in peak season and I would can it, freeze it, lacto-ferment it.”

Hayes says her idea of success changed. Spending time with her parents and children, cooking family meals – those are her successes.

And she’s found that more people are realizing the power of homemaking.

Hayes has now written a book called Radical Homemakers – which profiles twenty families that are saying “no” to regular jobs, and are instead raising chickens and growing veggies.

Hayes says homemaking is a new route for women who consider themselves feminists.

“I think that a lot of feminists are realizing that the family home life is extremely important. I do think that this is part of the next wave of feminism.”

One feminist blogger asked with disgust:
Are you telling women to get back in the kitchen?

Traditional feminists don’t like the sound of this one bit.

Brittany Shoot is another feminist blogger. She’s concerned with calling homemaking feminism. Shoot writes about eco-feminist issues for Bitch Media and The Women’s International Perspective. She says just because some women are doing it, does NOT make it feminism. She says Hayes’ message could be considered a step backward for women.

“I can’t imagine saying to my grandmother, ‘I’m going to stay home and just hang out.'”

Shoot says her grandmother struggled to attend university, and didn’t have nearly the choices Brittany has for a career. She would want Brittany to make the most of her opportunities.

“We’ve come so far. Why would you make this decision when you have the ability to have a career that may not only be lucrative, but fulfilling.”

But Shannon Hayes says we’ve been conditioned to want the money and status of a big job and that’s proving to be as empty for many women as it is for many men.

Hayes says being a housewife in the ‘50s and 60s was limiting. Back then, when Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, women were depressed by their role as homemakers. Women were losing their own identities to serve their husbands and children. But Hayes says women today are losing their identities to the workplace. She also says corporations have largely taken over in the home.
She says when women left the kitchen to join the workforce, that’s when everyone started eating processed, unhealthy foods.

“I think everybody should get back in the kitchen, not just women. But that’s because I don’t think you should be buying processed foods, and I don’t think you should be supporting industrial agriculture, and don’t think that you should be supporting food traveling thousands of miles.”

Hayes says becoming a homemaker isn’t abandoning feminism, it’s redefining it on her own terms. She’s sharing homemaking with her husband… and both are finding more balance between home life and work.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Politics Delay Climate Bill

  • Senator Lindsey Graham has walked out on the bill– saying he can’t go forward because the Democratic leadership is now playing politics with immigration policy.(Photo courtesy of the US Senate)

A climate and energy bill was supposed to be introduced in the Senate this week. But Mark Brush reports… politics are getting in the way:

Transcript

A climate and energy bill was supposed to be introduced in the Senate this week. But Mark Brush reports… politics are getting in the way:

Senators John Kerry – a Democrat – Joe Lieberman – an Independent – and Lindsey Graham a Republican have been working on a climate and energy bill.

There have been months of delicate negotiations.

But Senator Graham has walked out – saying he can’t go forward because the Democratic leadership is now playing politics with immigration policy.

Dan Weiss is the Director of Climate Strategy for the Center for American Progress – a liberal public policy group. He says all these delays come with costs:

“Every day that we wait to reform our energy policies, we buy a billion dollars worth of oil from other countries… Iran will earn an extra hundred million dollars in oil revenue… China will get further ahead of us in developing the clean energy technologies of the future.”

The House passed a climate and energy bill last year, but a Senate bill has been repeatedly delayed.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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New Details on Bat-Killing Fungus

  • In caves where 200 to 300 thousand bats used to hibernate, scientists like Scott Darling have found that this year there are only hundreds. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Scientists are racing to find a way to fight-off a fungus that’s killing bats. More than a million bats have died so far. Scientists believe entire hibernating bat species could be wiped out within two decades. Laura Iiyama reports the cause might have come from overseas:

Transcript

Scientists are racing to find a way to fight-off a fungus that’s killing bats. More than a million bats have died so far. Scientists believe entire hibernating bat species could be wiped out within two decades. Laura Iiyama reports the cause might have come from overseas:

Biologist Scott Darling knew something was wrong in a recent winter when he got several calls at his Fish and Wildlife office in Vermont. People told him about hundreds of bats flying in the air and dying in the snow. During winter, the furry mammals should be hibernating.

He went to Aeolus cave. It’s where the bats in the area should be crowded together on the walls and ceiling.

“Aeolus cave became a morgue. Bats freezing to death in clusters just outside the cave entrance. Most of the bats flew out of the cave onto the landscape to certain death.”

Where 200 to 300 thousand bats had hibernated just four years ago, this year there are just a couple hundred.

The dead bats had white nose syndrome.

The white powdery fungus was first noticed on bats in New York State in 2006. It’s spread into Ontario, Canada and as far south as Tennessee.

The fungus is not directly killing the bats.

Thomas Kunz is a professor at Boston University. He suspects the fungus keeps waking-up the hibernating bats.

“It may be simply the irritation from the fungus that is causing, if you have athlete’s feet, it itches.”

Instead of hibernating, surviving on their fat reserves, the bats keep waking-up. They burn off the fat. They get too thin. And they die.

Word spread about the fungus.

Thomas Kunz says some scientists recalled seeing a white fungus on bats elsewhere:

“Bat biologists in Europe have observed and reported that there are bats that do have the fungus although it doesn’t seem to be killing them.”

Scientists think someone visited a cave in Europe. Spores from the fungus got on clothing or shoes. Then that person wore the same shoes or clothing in a cave in the U.S. The spores were picked-up by the bats.

The bats huddle together in hibernation, easily spreading the fungus.

Often 90 percent of the bats are killed-off after the first appearance of the fungus. And Kunz says that may have been what happened to bats in Europe because we don’t find as many bats in European caves as there have been in North American caves:

“Now it’s very possible that in historic times there were large numbers of hibernating bats in Europe and these are the leftovers, these were the survivors that may be resistant to the fungus.”

So the arrival of the fungus may mean US bat species will permanently drop in numbers, like the bats in Europe.

David Blehert (blee-hurt) of the US Geological Survey says if that’s the case, it will be a dramatic change in life in caves in America and Canada.

“Whereas we have hibernation caves with 100 thousand, 300 thousand and even commonly lower ten thousand but those are rather common sites where we’ve seen the fungus decimate up to 95 percent and greater to the animals in the cave. Many of the European hibernation sites have between one and thirty animals.”

There’s no treatment for white nose syndrome. And even if a cure is found, it will be a very long time –centuries– before the bats recover. Bats reproduce slowly. The females have only one pup, one baby bat, per year. And there are over a million bats dead so far.

For The Environment Report, I’m Laura Iiyama.

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Using NAFTA to Restrict Canadian Oil Imports?

  • In their submission, the environment groups charge that oil extraction processes leach contaminants into both surface and groundwater in the Athabasca watershed. (Photo courtesy of Aude CC-2.0)

You might think about imported oil and Saudi Arabia or Venezuela come to mind. But, the single biggest source of imported oil to the U.S. comes from Canada. And half of that comes from a dirty form of oil called tar sands oil. Lester Graham reports environmentalists are trying to use NAFTA to get restrictions on tar sands oil:

Transcript

You might think about imported oil and Saudi Arabia or Venezuela come to mind. But, the single biggest source of imported oil to the U.S. comes from Canada. And half of that comes from a dirty form of oil called tar sands oil. Lester Graham reports environmentalists are trying to use NAFTA to get restrictions on tar sands oil.

Environmental groups say extracting tar sands oil causes a lot of water pollution. Matt Price is with Environmental Defence Canada:

“We keep on presenting the evidence to the government, and they just sort of keep on ignoring it which is why we filed this citizens’ complaint.”

They’ve filed the complaint under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The say oil companies in Canada are not complying with Canadian environmental laws and that might be a violation of the NAFTA treaty. So, his group and others are taking the fight to Canada’s trading partners.

They’re hoping the U-S and Mexico will step in.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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